Da Vinci's Bicycle - Guy Davenport (e novels to read TXT) 📗

you know, Citoyen Martin, that the greens get greener as one moves north up Europe? There is but one green, an acid, dull olive green, in the Mediterranean, but here on Guernsey there are forty greens, viridities of incredible brilliance, smaragdines, chartreuses, O leek and beryl and citrine. From tree to haw to lawn the eye passes more verdurous shades than in all Naples. You have a very Africa of green here, all the Brazils. And with the tenderest blue of the sky, the wild forzando of the fuchsia, and the glory of the jonquils to accent it. This is another Polynesia, with frost and fog.

And scarcely without taking a new breath he turned from the window and stared into my eyes.

— Tell me about Tapner, he said.

It was over Tapner that he had insulted the Queen. He had written a haughty letter to Palmerston himself that had been printed in the paper. I coughed and said nothing.

— It is, he went on, turning back to the window, a charming place indeed, your Saint-Pierre-Port. It is almost like a city for bustle when the paquebote is in, but in between, what serenity!

— It is not Paris, I said.

— Paris! he almost spat. Paris! he said with a long sigh. What is Paris but the avenue de l’Opéra? Snobs, merchants, politicians, boulevardiers, pedants, stupid women. If I fear l’expioulcheune it is because I would be in danger of having to return to all that merde. Can you show me the gibbet where Tapner died?

— Guernsey is an honest island, I said. We are all God-fearing people here, chapel for the most. We are nonconformists, like Milton, like Cromwell. We like to think of ourselves as independent and moral. There are about forty thousand souls on the islands, and there were but three in jail before the execution of Mr. Tapner. There are but two now, one of them a man kept there as a debtor by his wife, to whom he owes sixteen shillings. It is said that they love each other dearly, but as she likes to say, money is money. He has been there ten years.

His eyes got as big as pennies. I fancied he was about to take it all back about our lovely greens.

— I tell you this, I went on, to explain how little trouble we have among us. Tapner seemed to be the Devil his very self. His like is not common here, as I have no doubt it is in terrible places like London and Europe.

He smiled. He was, I’ll vow, a gracious man.

— It’s Mr. Barbet we’d have to see, I said. He’s the jailor. He saw more of Tapner than I.

— You are the Queen’s Provost, yes?

I nodded that I was, as he very well knew.

It was the opinion of Polly that this strange family was itself a signal contribution to the element of crime and impropriety on our island. The son François Victor had arrived and was said to be turning all the plays of Shakespeare into French, and as fast as he was doing them they were acting them in the evenings. We had the word here and the word there that duels with pokers had been sighted by passersby with a view of the windows, and that Agatha Tippy the seamstress had been asked to run up laughable clothes of purple and yellow stuff such as a mummer might wear.

Worse than that, the old one made up plays himself. We heard from their cook that one of them was about a lion that ate Christians in the time of the Romans. The old one took this part, wearing a false face that made him look like a cat the size of a pony, or a mustard owl. The story is out of an old book, as I explained to Polly. It is a tale in which an early Christian takes a thorn from the sore foot of a lion and, later, when it is his time to be a martyr and to fight wild beasts for the amusement of the Romans, it is this very lion to which he did the kindness that he faces, and instead of eating him the lion rolls over, returning the good deed.

— Grown people! said Polly. But then they’re French. And there’s another one has come, a Miss Drouet, if you please.

— A kinswoman? I’d asked.

— Foot, hooted Polly, nor frip of her was never a tenth cousin to any of that crew. What a nupson you can be, John Martin! The woman’s a hoor. Your Frenchman, I’ve been told, has a wife for show and another woman for the sin of it, and they think no more of it than whistle up the drainpipe, hen tread the midden. What’s more, they’re all Papists, and not a moral among them anymore than a rat wears a flannel shimmy. She wasn’t in her house a week before she sent for Hodge Perthmore to lay out a bed of flowers for her to make the letters of the alphabet vee and aitch. I tell you, it’s like Mesopotamia in the Bible, kings and concubines. I hear the Vicar has had to put a vinegar rag to his temples for worrying about it.

In addition to which there was taking Shakespeare out of the table. That gave me more of a turn than their nesting habits.

— Yiss indeed, Tabitha Grimble told us, holding her saucer of tea at her chin and looking at us out of the side of her eyes. I have it on a word of honor. They take Shakespeare out of a table. The table cocks its leg, so to speak, and raps on the floor. I didn’t sleep all night, thinking about it. And when it has rapped in a certain way, Shakespeare begins to write to them from the beyond, if you see what I mean.

Polly’s eyes were out on stalks.

— They follow one scandal with the next!

— They have a board